Modeling of the Performance of Reference Inlet Configurations Used in Air-Breathing Missiles

This research is part of a joint program between the DRDC Valcartier and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). Because of the high costs associated with flight and experimental measurements in wind tunnel, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become a useful tool for predicting fluid flow. With performance improvements of computer and numerical codes, a much faster prediction of fluid flow and shock wave position is believed to be possible. This report presents some studies in Computational Fluid Dynamics related to 2D supersonic rectangular inlets and 3D conical inlets. For fixed geometry intakes, changes in flight conditions, such as different speeds and angles of attack, can have a significant impact on intake performance. Due to the calculation time that was greater than expected, only part of our goal was accomplished. This study examines the performance of a typical isentropic compression rectangular inlet for a design Mach number of 3.1 and back pressure of 6000000 Pa. The goal of the study was to develop a methodology for fast predictions of the aerodynamics and inlet performance of supersonic airbreathing missiles and to apply this method to verify the performance of reference inlet configurations used in airbreathing missiles. Two validation cases with experimental measurements were undertaken to verify the methodology.